Obama letter handed to India amid consultations on Pakistan
WASHINGTON (AFP) A US diplomat has handed India a letter from US President Barack Obama as both countries consult closely on stabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan, US envoy Richard Holbrooke said Wednesday.
Holbrooke, briefing reporters on his own visit to Pakistan and Gulf Arab states last week, said US diplomat William Burns delivered the letter after arriving in Delhi overnight Tuesday but declined to divulge its contents.
"This administration believes that what happens in Afghanistan and Pakistan is of vital interest to our national security, and ...that India is a country that we must keep in closest consultation with," Holbrooke said.
He said he talked to Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, after his arrival in India.
Burns "is carrying a presidential letter to the Indian government. He is carrying the messages that I would have carried if I had the time to go to Delhi on this trip but I couldn't do it."
Holbrooke added: "We consider India an absolutely critical country in the region. They are vitally effective and we want to work closely with them."
In Delhi, Burns held talks with Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon in the first formal contact between Obama's administration and New Delhi's recently-elected government.
The United States has been encouraging India to restart dialogue with Pakistan, stalled since last November's attacks on Mumbai in which 166 people were killed.
India says the 10 gunmen involved in the assault were trained by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Islamic rebel group and has demanded that the alleged plotters be brought to justice.
Holbrooke said during a visit to Delhi in April that the threat posed by Al-Qaeda and its allies can be met only with the joint efforts of arch rivals India and Pakistan, as well as the United States.
But Holbrooke stressed that Washington had no intention of pushing New Delhi into resuming a peace dialogue with fellow nuclear power Islamabad.
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AFP: Obama letter handed to India amid consultations on Pakistan
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Interesting - wonder if this has any relevance to the statements by Zardari and Gillani especially that WTF mentioned earlier.